‘I don’t know about that. It would be easy enough for any one to get from the wharf to the garden. There are half-a-dozen doors at the back of the house, and more than a dozen places in the stables and outhouses where a man might lie hidden, so as to slip into the house at any convenient moment.’ ‘You forget how carefully Mrs. Wincher turns all the keys, and draws all the bolts at sunset. Pray be reasonable, Lucius, and dismiss this absurd fancy from your mind. And instead of standing here with that solemn face, arguing about impossibilities, come to my grandfather’s room with those papers.’ Never had she spoken more lightly. Yet a minute ago her cheek had been blanched, her eye dilated by terror. Lucius gave a little sigh of resignation and followed her along the corridor. After all it was a very foolish thing that he had been doing; raising fears, perhaps groundless, in the breast of this lonely girl. Her grandfather had studiously refrained from any mention of his suspicions lest he should alarm Lucille. Yet he, the lover, had been so reckless as to suggest terrors which might give a new pain to her solitary life. Mr. Sivewright received the bundle of papers with evident satisfaction, and turned them over with hands that trembled in their eagerness. ‘Documents of no moment,’ he said; ‘a few old records of my business life, put away in that disused piece of lumber up-stairs, and half forgotten. But when, at the gates of the tomb, a man reviews his past life, it is a satisfaction to be able to try back by means of such poor memorials as these. They serve to kindle the lamp of memory. He sees his own words, his own thoughts written years ago, and they seem to him like the thoughts and words of the dead.’ He thrust the papers into a desk which was drawn close to his bedside. ‘You have been better to-day, I hope?’ said Lucius, when Lucille had left the room in quest of the old man’s evening meal. ‘No; not so well. I don’t like your new medicine.’ ‘My new medicine is the medicine you have been taking for the last five weeks—a mild tonic, as I told you. But you are tired of it, perhaps. I’ll change it for something else.’ ‘Do. I don’t like its effect upon me.’ And then he went on to state symptoms which seemed to indicate increasing weakness, nausea, lassitude, and that unreasonable depression of mind which was worse than any physical ailment. ‘It seems like a forecast of death,’ he said despondently. Lucius was puzzled. For some time past there had been a marked improvement, but this change boded no good. The thread of life had been worn thin; any violent shock might snap it. But Lucius had believed that in supreme rest and tranquillity lay the means of recovery. He could not vanquish organic disease; but he might fortify even a worn-out constitution, and make the sands of life drop somewhat slower through the glass.